This season on The Flash the heroes have been dealing with what might be their most frightening and lethal threat yet with the mysterious Black Flame, a seemingly sentient black flame so cold it burns its victims to death. Last week, however, the Black Flame came to Caitlin and revealed itself to actually somehow be Ronnie Raymond, her deceased husband who sacrificed himself to save Central City all the way back in Season 1. With the idea that the Black Flame may be Ronnie and that he needs their help, this week’s episode, “Resurrection”, saw the team figuring out how to do just that — though not everyone was on the same page. Now, the truth about Black Flame — and Ronnie — has been revealed. Warning: major spoilers for Season 8, Episode 11 of The Flash, “Resurrection”, below!
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While Caitlin was convinced that Black Flame was Ronnie and that he’d come to her for help — albeit by hunting down, feeding on the grief of, and killing various people connected to her to do so — not everyone believed her at first. Barry in particular was pretty suspicious even though Caitlin had some scientific data that seemed to prove his Black Flame situation was a byproduct of his demise in the singularity and that to fix him all they had to do was reverse engineer the technology that allowed Ronnie to be Firestorm years ago. Soon, however, Cecile got on board with the idea that Black Flame is indeed Ronnie when she was able to feel the entity but instead of thinking Ronnie wanted to be saved, Cecile determined that Ronnie was in agony and wanted Caitlin to help him die instead. This led to a bit of an impasse with the team with everyone except Caitlin wanting to contain Black Flame and snuff it out, thus killing Ronnie and setting him free while Caitlin wanted to save him by restoring him to life. In the end, Caitlin (with an assist from Frost) won out. She put the device on the Black Flame’s human form and suddenly brought Ronnie back to life.
Unfortunately, the joy of having Ronnie back would be short lived for Caitlin. She’d later discover him out of his bed at STAR Labs speaking in a dark and creepy voice ultimately revealing that Ronnie is in fact dead. Instead, what they’ve brought back in Ronnie’s body is something else entirely: Deathstorm. And if you guessed by the black eyes and the creepy fiery skull business of it all (not to mention the name) that Deathstorm isn’t a good thing, then you’d be absolutely correct. In comics, Deathstorm was created by Nekron, a physical manifestation of death, during the Blackest Night event and is, essentially, an evil incarnation of the undead Firestorm who is enlisted by Nekron as part of his crusade to destroy all life and emotion. The revelation that Ronnie is Deathstorm on The Flash has already got many speculating that the series could be headed towards its own version of Blackest Night.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that Amell has played a version of Deathstorm on The Flash. Amell previously played the evil Earth-2 version of Ronnie, which was also called Deathstorm, though Amell told TV Insider that the Deathstorm introduced in “Resurrection” is definitely not the same and we’ll be seeing more of him.
“At first I wasn’t sure, and then I finally got a script to read, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool!’” Amell said. “This is not the human version of Deathstorm. He’s more like a monster who’s lonely who wants his bride.”
“He feeds off of anguish and pain and all of those things. So, you get to see him put the rest of the cast through the wringer,” Amell said. “And a lot of my fun on this show is actually in the ADR booth for all of the CG characters and when I’m talking through other characters, having to match their lips and their tone. It was a blast. As far as ways to come back to the show, it was super cool.”
The Flash airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
